You can reach the castle by passing through the quaint archway of the Hotel
de Ville, and then passing through the shady public garden you plunge into
the dry moat that surrounds the fortified mound. There is not very much to
see but what appears in a distant view of the town, and in many ways the
outside groupings of the worn ruin and the church roofs and spire above the
houses are better than the scenes in the town itself. The Hotel Croix
Blanche is a pleasant little house for dejeuner. Everything is extremely
simple and typical of the family methods of the small French inn, where
excellent cooking goes along with many primitive usages. The cool
salle-a-manger is reached through the general living-room and kitchen,
which is largely filled with the table where you may see the proprietor
and his family partaking of their own meals. There seems no room to cook
anything at all, and yet when you are seated in the next room the
daughter of the family, an attractive and neatly dressed girl,
gracefully serves the most admirable courses, worthy and perhaps better
than what one may expect to obtain in the best hotel in Rouen.

There is a road that passes right through the forest of Conches towards
Rugles, but that must be left for another occasion if we are to see
anything of the charms of Beaumont-le-Roger, the perfectly situated little
town that lies half-way between Conches and Bernay.

The long street of the town containing some very charming peeps as you go
towards the church is really a terrace on the limestone hills that rises
behind the houses on the right, and falls steeply on the left. Spaces
between the houses and narrow turnings give glimpses of the rich green
country down below. From the lower level you see the rocky ridge above
clothed in a profusion of trees. The most perfect picture in the town is
from the river bank just by the bridge. In the foreground is the
mirror-like stream that gives its own rendering of the scene that is built